The health watchdog has rated Carefound Home Care as "Outstanding" in all areas, making it the first home care service in Cheshire and one of the only services in the UK to achieve this accolade.
Carefound Home Care provides highly personalised home care services to elderly people enabling them to remain at home regardless of their health condition. Rather than operating from a national head office or working under contracts with councils, its local care management teams tailor care directly with families which can range from visiting care of one hour upwards through to full-time live-in care as an alternative to care homes.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found the quality of care provided by Carefound Home Care (Wilmslow) to be Outstanding in all five areas - safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led - following an inspection in August 2018.
The report published by the CQC states that the service had "exceptional and distinctive methods" to ensure people were cared for by staff they could connect well with and staff were "overwhelmingly positive" about management. Inspectors also highlighted how the service delivered the "best possible care" to people living with specialist health conditions, including using technology to collect clients' health data which is then used to identify the risk of health incidents and avoid unnecessary admissions to hospital.
The full inspection report can be found at: www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-3963792561.
Debbie Westhead, Deputy Chief Inspector for Adult Social Care in the North, said "This is a service where the staff and management are clearly passionate about providing personalised care and have created an environment where people are treated with compassion, dignity and respect in a persons' own home. People and their relatives were overwhelmingly positive about the high quality, individualised care that was provided by the staff.
"The staff and management should be proud of their achievement in attaining our highest rating and I would like to congratulate them on their provision of high quality care."
Carefound Home Care was founded in Harrogate, North Yorkshire in 2012 where the service is also rated Outstanding by the CQC, something only 3% of care providers in the UK have achieved. The Cheshire office was opened in Wilmslow, Cheshire East in 2017 to enable the organisation to deliver truly local care to elderly people across this area.
Oliver Stirk, Director of Carefound Home Care, said "We at Carefound Home Care are very proud to be the first home care service in Cheshire and one of the few in the country to be rated Outstanding in all five areas by the CQC.
"This rating is the highest we could have achieved and it is testament to the fantastic people we employ across our organisation in Cheshire and Yorkshire.
"The health and social care system is facing huge challenges as the population ages and unmet care needs continue to rise. This report clearly demonstrates how highly personalised services like ours, working collaboratively with other parts of the system, are a vital part of the solution."
Katie Brennan, Home Care Manager for Carefound Home Care (Wilmslow), added "We, our staff and our clients are delighted that the care, compassion and hard work of our team has been recognised in this way by the CQC.
"We are utterly dedicated to providing the highest quality care to our clients and unrivalled local support and employment packages to our staff. This result spurs us on to even better things in the future and we look forward to welcoming clients and staff to Carefound Home Care as we continue to develop our care at home service in Cheshire."
Photo: Amie Blott and Katie Brennan of Carefound Home Care (Wilmslow) celebrate being rated "Outstanding" in all areas by the CQC with client, Mrs Ratcliffe and her daughter, Linda Smith.
